Commenting changes

David M SingerFeb 20, 2013 1:26 PM

A while back, we made the move from our own commenting system to Disqus. We didn't want to force people to sign up for yet another account on the web, and using social logins (or perhaps a Disqus login you already had) seemed the easiest option. I had the ability to bring social logins to our own system, but it was still very basic in nature.

Disqus recently sent out an email that they were pushing us onto their new system. I think they have a really good product, but there are a couple of reasons why I held off using it.

The first is default ordering. With the pre-existing system, all comments were ordered from old to new by default. A user could change that, but that was their option. Few people change default settings (I'm being a little lazy about a reference link right now).

Now, the default ordering is by best/most popular, and I cannot change it for anyone other than myself. For some posts, this works just fine. For others - think any open thread - it doesn't keep a conversation flowing.

If you'd like to change it, click/tap on Discussion, and choose your desired ordering.

Another reason I was holding off was the look. It's good, but not as customizable as I'd want. This is part appearance, part other functions.

Some other notes:

Replies can be three levels deep now.

The team here will be marked off with "Mod" for now, until we think of something more punny.

There is now down-voting. Anyone can up-vote, but only a logged in user can down-vote.

Mobile support should be better.

Live updates should be considerably better.

If there are any questions I can answer, feel free to leave a comment

David is a Bears fan. Besides being the only non-Broncos fan on the IAOFM staff, he is emailed every time Jay Cutler does something stupid. He is emailed a lot. You can follow him on twitter @singer or visit his insanity over at hockeyfights.com.

So you're that guy! Half-kidding. IE8 is a small part of our audience now and I was hoping we'd luck out with no commenters using it. Weighed against others who were having issues (like the iPad crowd you can see above) it's the right path, but I'm sorry it was too early for you. We were being moved over to it whether or not I did anything, I just triggered it a little early.

Posted by David Singer on 2013-02-21 21:00:49

Glad it's working for you. Hope it does for everyone else.

Posted by David Singer on 2013-02-21 20:57:43

Doug would put us all on diets if we had FAT tags.

Posted by David Singer on 2013-02-21 20:54:12

My hope is yes, but I'll need everyone's feedback.

Posted by David Singer on 2013-02-21 20:53:49

This _should _ be better. If not, let me know and I'll forward all the feedback to Disqus.

Posted by David Singer on 2013-02-21 20:53:28

iI dontdon't want to be a complainers, but I've got to say I'm not liking this change at all. The reason is that comments no longer support OR

Posted by Hercules_Rockefeller on 2013-02-21 10:23:05

I've found discus to be really bad at refreshing comments on my iPad. Basically it doesn't -- I have to force a refresh. The forced refresh then takes you to comment 1-50 no matter where you were, so on long game day threads you have to hit the "show more" button _a lot_ to participate actively. Add in the propensity of Discus to hang when posting from a mobile and it can be fairly frustrating, especially during playoff games with bad officiating...

Posted by DCJ1 on 2013-02-20 21:05:55

And it no longer locks up when commenting from your iPad!!

Posted by jvill on 2013-02-20 20:59:29

Is there any improvement in iPad, iPhone freezes?

If so then hurrrrrray for fatman.

If not then I liked status quo.

Posted by Lonestar47 on 2013-02-20 20:36:48

You can't see the commenting in those threads?

Posted by David Singer on 2013-02-20 19:41:35

+1

Posted by RyanHennigan on 2013-02-20 17:11:08

Broncotalk went over to the new system last ear and it seems OK. BUT The ordering thing is really strange.

As for the "Mod" tag, how'd you all fancy "FatMan" or if it has to be three letters "FAT"